Thirst for Love

by Yukio Mishima

  He moved into a half-crouching position and launched into a narrative: “It’s no lie. I never wanted much to have Miyo for my wife. In fact, I talked to Mother about that at Tenri. She’s against it. ‘It’s too early for you to get married,’ she says. I barely had the nerve to tell her that Miyo’s going to have a baby. Then Mother got even more against it. ‘Why do I want to take a stupid girl like that for a daughter-in-law?’ she says. ‘I don’t even want to see the face of a nasty girl like that.’ So she didn’t come to Maidemmura, and went straight home from Tenri.”

  This artless tale, so haltingly recounted, brimmed with an elusive honesty. Etsuko abandoned herself to the intense joy, the dreamlike ecstasy of this fleeting moment. As she listened, her eyes gleamed, her nostrils quivered.

  As if deep in a trance she said: “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me this right away?”

  Then she went on in the same way: “Of course . . . that’s why your mother didn’t come back with you.”

  Then she went on in the same way: “At that rate, when you got back here and Miyo wasn’t here, it worked out perfectly, didn’t it?”

  Her words were half thought, half spoken. She had difficulty distinguishing between the soliloquy that kept insistently repeating itself in her mind and the soliloquy that she uttered.

  In dreams, seedlings mature instantly into fruit-bearing trees, and small birds become winged horses. So in Etsuko’s trance, outlandish hopes waxed into the shape of hopes capable of immediate realization.

  What if I am the one Saburo has loved? I will have to be bold and try to find out. I must not even think that what I anticipate will not come true. If my hopes come true, I shall be happy! It’s that simple.

  Thus Etsuko pondered. Hopes for whose fruition one does not fear, however, are not hopes so much as, in the last analysis, a species of desperation.

  “All right; but, then, who in the world do you love?” Etsuko asked.

  Surely this sagacious woman was making a mistake here, for in these circumstances it was not words that would bring her and Saburo together. If she but reached out her hand and gently touched Saburo’s shoulder, perhaps everything might have begun. Just the intermingling of hands, perhaps, would have served to fuse these two disparate spirits together.

  But words stood between them like an intransigent ghost, so Saburo did not interpret as he should have the blood that flooded Etsuko’s cheeks. He was like a child face to face with a difficult problem in algebra. The only answer he had was retreat.

  “Love . . . don’t love—not again! No, not again,” he said to himself.

  This counter-word, love, at first glance so convenient, had brought an excess of meanings into the life he had been leading with so little reflection. It promised, furthermore, to impose unnecessary structuring on the life he would live in the future. He could not think of it as representing anything more than a completely unnecessary concept.

  He found no room in his life fitted out for this word as a daily necessity, as something for which he would at times place his life in the balance. It was difficult for him even to imagine it. And the stupidity that leads some owners of such a room to burn the whole house down in order to rid themselves of it was to him utterly ridiculous.

  A young man stood beside a young woman. It was entirely natural that Saburo should kiss Miyo. They copulated. And thus a child sprouted in Miyo’s womb. And then it was entirely natural that Saburo should tire of Miyo. Their childish play had reached its peak, and he no longer needed Miyo for that play; anyone would do just as well. In fact, saying he tired of Miyo may not be correct. To Saburo, Miyo no longer had to be Miyo; that was all.

  Saburo never acted by the proposition that if a person did not love someone he would have to be in love with someone else, or that if he loved someone he could not be in love with someone else. Again, therefore, he couldn’t answer her.

  * * *

  Who was it that was pushing this innocent boy into a corner in this way? Who was to blame for pushing him into a corner and making him give ill-considered answers?

  Saburo decided that he must depend not on his own inclinations but on a practical, worldly tactic—a course that is common enough among men who have dined since childhood on the food of strangers.

  Once he had made this decision, it did not take him long to read in Etsuko’s eyes the wish that he speak her name.

  “Her eyes are wet with concern, aren’t they? That’s it. The right answer is her name; that’s what she wants. No doubt about it,” he thought.

  He picked one of the wrinkled grapes near him and rolled it in his hand. Then he looked down and said, succinctly: “Madam, it’s you.”

  The lie in his tone was only too obvious. It said “I do not love you” more unequivocally than the words “I do not love you” would have. No cool head was necessary to see through his artless lie. Even Etsuko, therefore, deep in her trance though she had been, came to herself with his words.

  It was all over.

  She put her hands back and adjusted her hair, cold from the night air. Then she said, in a composed, rather heroic tone: “We’d better get back. We have to leave early tomorrow, and I’d better get a little sleep, anyway.”

  Saburo dropped his left shoulder slightly and stood up, rather disconsolately. Etsuko felt cold at her neck and adjusted her scarf. Saburo noticed that her lips shone dark in the shadow of the withered grape leaves.

  Saburo was weary of this tedious dialogue. What caught his eye as he looked up now and again was not a woman, but some kind of spiritual monster, some undefinable spiritual embodiment—hating, suffering, bleeding, or raising a shout of joy—pure raw nerves incarnate.

  As she stood up, however, her scarf close about her neck, Saburo became conscious for the first time that she was a woman. As she started to leave the greenhouse, he extended his arm and barred her way.

  Etsuko twisted her body and stared at him as if to stab him into desisting. As a boat propelled through water thick with weeds has its oar strike the bottom of another boat, so the firm flesh of his arm, in spite of the layers of clothing intervening, collided palpably with the soft flesh of her breasts.

  He was not deterred at all by her stare. He opened his mouth gently. Then he chuckled reassuringly, without a sound. Then, seemingly without realizing it, he blinked rapidly two or three times.

  Why did Etsuko say nothing all this time? Was it because she had finally come to understand that words were useless? Was it because, like a man who looks down at the bottom of a precipice and becomes fascinated by it until he can think of nothing else, she had at last grasped the failure of her hopes and now could not let go?

  Pressed here by this joyful, heedless young flesh, she started to perspire. One of her zori came off and slid away upside-down.

  She resisted, without knowing why. She resisted—as if she were leaning against something.

  He held her firmly, both her arms pinioned to her sides. She kept moving her head so that their lips never met. In the intensity of the struggle, Saburo tripped over the stool and fell to one knee in the straw. Etsuko slipped from his arms and dashed from the greenhouse.

  Why did she scream? Why did she call for help? Whom did she call? What name was there other than Saburo that she would want to call that much? Where was there anyone to rescue her other than Saburo? So why did she call for help? And what would it achieve? Where was she . . . where would she go . . . where was she to be rescued from and where was she to be taken?

  Saburo ran after her and threw her down into the pampas grass that grew rankly by the greenhouses. Her body fell deep into a clump of vegetation. The weeds cut their hands, mixing blood with the sweat upon them, of which they were unaware.

  Etsuko saw Saburo’s face close to hers, red, sweaty and shining. She thought: Is there anything in this world so beautiful as a young man’s countenance made beautiful by lust, radiant by passion? Detached from these thoughts, her body still resisted.

  Saburo he
ld the woman down with the force of his chest and his arms and, at the same time, as if he were playing, bit the buttons loose from her black satin coat. Etsuko was only half conscious. She felt only a bursting affection for this great, heavy, active head rolling about on her breast.

  Yet in that moment she screamed.

  Before Saburo could be surprised by that piercing scream, his lithe body recovered its faculties and prepared to flee. Not out of logic, nor any conditioned emotional response—flight came into his mind by the very same process of direct apprehension that occurs in animals whose lives are in danger. He withdrew his body, stood up and started in the direction away from the Sugimoto home.

  A terrible power came into being in Etsuko. She sprang out of the half-stupor in which she had been sunk, and grasped the retreating Saburo.

  “Wait! Wait!” she screamed.

  The more she commanded, the more he retreated. As he fled, he attempted to free his body from the restraining arms of the woman. She clung to his thigh with all her power, barely realizing she was being dragged through briers.

  Yakichi opened his eyes and saw that Etsuko was not on the pallet beside him. Feeling his worst fears justified, he went to Saburo’s room, where he found another empty bed. In the soil outside the window he saw footprints.

  He returned to the kitchen and saw the back door standing open in the moonlight. If they had gone out this way, he surmised, surely they were headed for the pear orchard or the grape field. He had been working daily in the pear orchard, however, and knew its soil was freshly turned. He took the path to the grape field.

  He started down the path, but suddenly stopped and turned. In the doorway of the shed stood a mattock. He grasped the handle and took the tool with him—not for any deep reason; for defense, perhaps.

  As he came to the edge of the bamboo thicket, Yakichi heard Etsuko screaming. He shouldered the mattock and started to run.

  As Saburo struggled desperately to escape, he turned and saw Yakichi running toward him. His legs refused to move. He stood still and watched Yakichi, fiercely panting, run up to him.

  Etsuko felt the power go out of Saburo’s efforts to escape and stood up wondering what had happened. Her body should have been one mass of pain, but she was not aware of it. She realized that someone was standing beside her. It was Yakichi in his nightclothes. He stood with the mattock resting at his side. His chest protruded naked from his sleeping kimono, laboring with his tortured breath.

  She looked him in the eye without wavering.

  The old man’s body was quivering all over. He looked down, unable to meet her gaze.

  His irresoluteness filled her with anger. She seized the mattock from the old man and swung it at Saburo’s shoulder. He was standing beside her in shock, awaiting nothing, comprehending nothing. The well-honed white steel passed above his shoulder and cut through the nape of his neck.

  The young man emitted a small, suppressed shout from somewhere in the vicinity of his throat and tottered forward. The next blow slashed him across the skull. He put his hands to his head and fell.

  Yakichi and Etsuko stood rooted, watching the still faintly writhing body. Actually, they saw nothing at all.

  After a number of seemingly endless, wordless seconds, Yakichi spoke: “Why did you kill him?”

  “Because you didn’t.”

  “I wasn’t planning to kill him.”

  Etsuko turned toward him with a mad stare: “You’re lying. You were going to kill him. That’s what I was waiting for. You couldn’t save me without killing Saburo. Yet you hesitated. Standing there shaking. Shamelessly shaking. So I had to kill him for you.”

  “You can’t lay the blame on me!”

  “Who is? Tomorrow morning early, I’ll go to the police. I alone.”

  “Take your time. There are a lot of things that must be thought through. But why, oh why, did you have to kill him?”

  “He was making me suffer, that’s why.”

  “But it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Not his fault? That’s not so. He got what he deserved for hurting me. Nobody has the right to cause me pain. Nobody can get away with that.”

  “Who is to say they can’t?”

  “I say so. And what I say, no one can change.”

  “You’re a terrifying woman.”

  Yakichi breathed a long sigh, as if discovering for the first time that he was not the perpetrator of the crime: “Listen. Let’s take our time. We can take our time and decide what to do. Until then, though, we’d better make sure no one finds him.”

  He took the mattock from Etsuko’s hand. The handle was wet with spattered blood.

  Yakichi’s next task was a strange one. Nearby was a plot of land prepared for upland rice planting. There, like a man cultivating far into the night, he assiduously set to digging a hole.

  During the fairly long period it took Yakichi to dig the shallow grave, Etsuko sat on the ground staring at Saburo’s body, face down. His sweater was pulled up slightly, and the bare skin of his back showed where his khaki shirt had ridden up with the sweater. That skin showed forth an ashen earth color. One cheek was pressed deep into the sod; from his mouth, twisted from pain, protruded a row of sharp white teeth. He almost seemed to be smiling. Beneath his forehead, oozing with brain matter, his eyelids seemed sunk in, they were closed so tightly.

  Yakichi finished digging, went to Etsuko’s side, and tapped her lightly on the shoulder.

  The head and trunk were bloody and hard to grasp, so Yakichi took the corpse by the legs and dragged it across the grass. Even in the dark, black spots were visible where he had lain. Saburo’s upturned face and head shook as if nodding as it struck stones or thick clods of the earth.

  Yakichi and Etsuko quickly threw dirt on the corpse stretched out in the shallow grave. At last all that remained was the smiling face, eyes closed and mouth half open. The front teeth shone stark white in the moonlight. Etsuko threw down the mattock, scooped up some dirt with her hand and sprinkled it into the mouth. Dirt rained into that dark cave of a mouth. Yakichi raked in a great mass of soil from the side of the hole with the mattock and covered the dead face.

  When the corpse was covered thickly with dirt, Etsuko walked on it, wearing only her tabi, to pack it down. The soft soil felt familiar—as if she were walking on bare skin.

  In the meantime Yakichi walked about, inspecting the ground and trampling out bloodstains. After that he covered them with dirt, which he trampled again and scattered.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, they washed the soil and the blood from their hands. Etsuko took off her tabi and her coat, which had been sprayed with blood. She had found her zori and worn them on the walk back.

  Yakichi’s hands were shaking so severely he couldn’t dip up water. Etsuko, who was not shaking at all, dipped it for them. She carefully wiped away the bloodstains that had formed in the sink.

  Etsuko left first, carrying her coat and tabi, rolled in a ball. She barely felt the skinburns and bruises she had suffered when dragged by Saburo. That was not true pain anyway.

  Maggie howled, then suddenly stopped.

  What can compare with the sleep that came upon Etsuko like divine favor as soon as she slipped into bed? Yakichi listened in amazement to her peaceful breathing. Extended fatigue, endless fatigue, tremendous fatigue far more immeasurable than the crime Etsuko had just committed, fulfilling fatigue derived from countless pains accumulated in the process of performing some efficacious act—surely no one could acquire innocent sleep like this without having paid for it with fatigue like that?

  Nevertheless, after the short period of rest that had been vouchsafed to her, Etsuko awoke. Around her lay deep darkness. The wall clock chopped out the heavy, melancholy seconds, one by one. Beside her Yakichi lay, sleepless and shivering. Etsuko did not speak. No one would hear her voice. She deliberately opened her eyes to the darkness in the room. She could see nothing.

  She could hear a distant cockcrow. Even now, with the daw
n still distant, the roosters were crowing back and forth. Far away—where, she could not tell—one crowed. Then another, as if to answer the first. Then another. Then another. The crowing of roosters in the middle of the night, fittingly, knows no end. It went on again. It went on beyond ending.

  . . . yet, there wasn’t a thing.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also by Yukio Mishima

  Thirst for Love

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5